Thanks for the Memories
by TechnoFusion
Summary: It's a game that we play at the end of the night.


**This story was also posted on Archive of Our Own. The version on that site is** **_unedited_**** and is only suitable for mature readers. **

The events of the night flooded through Jade's mind like a busted dam. Here she was, outside the door of her...acquaintance, Tori Vega, where her friends had deliberately excluded her and her boyfriend from playing cards. While they wouldn't come right out and say it, Jade's boyfriend thought he had easily cracked the mystery.

"Tell her _why _you didn't invite us to play," Beck insisted confidently, giving Tori a trusting look. God, Jade really hated that about him. Beck could've been asking her to rob a bank and Tori probably would've agreed. What Beck had wasn't an acquired talent he had to work at; it was a gift that he was born with. He was like catnip to every single girl he had ever met.

Jade knew deep down she didn't deserve him.

Before Tori had a chance to give a concrete answer, their friend Andre interrupted. "Alright! We didn't invite you guys to play because you two are always screaming at each other! It makes everybody feel awkward. It makes Cat faint, and sometimes it makes Robbie cry!"

It definitely felt worse for Jade to hear it from Andre then from Tori. With Tori, she could excuse it with 'She's an idiot', 'She wants Beck for herself'...she had some level of respect for Andre, and as such knew what he was saying was honestly how he, and all of their other friends felt.

Deep down, Jade wanted to cry. However, she knew that she couldn't let everyone see her like that, so she channeled that energy into anger towards everyone in the room. Everything around her started to blur as she realized that her perfect boyfriend was slipping right out of her fingers. Everything she said seemed meaningless...so she decided to dig herself deeper.

"I'm going to walk out that door, and I'm going to count to ten," Jade said, standing by the door to exit Tori's house.

"Don't forget three," Cat interrupted, briefly taking Jade out of her rage. As much as Jade wanted to be mad at her, she knew she meant no harm. Cat was like a cute little pet that followed them around. "Some people forget it."

"If I get to ten and you're not out there, I'm going home." Jade continued. "And we're over."

Jade opened the door, spitting out the first number right in Beck's face.

_**One.**_

As the door slammed behind her, Jade faced it and continued to count.

_**Two.**_

As Jade folded her arms around her chest, she couldn't help but remember the feeling of Beck's face pressed against it. The way they'd kiss any chance they could at school.

_**Three.**_

The first time she'd been inside Beck's RV. The first time they'd made out on the couch, with Jade leaving a special mark on his neck to let every girl at Hollywood Arts know who he belonged to.

_**Four.**_

The way she'd been a virgin before she met him. The way she asked him how many girls he'd been with before her, and his response that it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but what was between them.

_**Five.**_

The first time he'd seen her naked. The way he treated her body like a work of art.

_**Six.**_

The way his skin always seemed to link together with hers; the feeling wasn't like that of an invader, but of a common visitor, even on his first entry. It was as if their bodies and souls were connected.

Before Jade could get to the number seven, she heard a familiar screech from inside, followed by the sound of someone falling to the ground. Based on the calculated insanity of everyone in the house, her first guess was that it was Tori's annoying sister Trina tackling Beck. Based on the argument and mixture of words she wasn't really able to make out, her guess was right.

_Why is Trina tackling Beck?_ Jade thought to herself. _Was he going towards the door? Maybe I should go in there..._

Jade shook that worrying feeling off herself, realizing that it'd definitely been more then a couple of seconds now since she'd said "six."

_**Seven.**_

If Trina really jumped on Beck, couldn't he easily get her off of him? He has to be stronger than her.

_**Eight.**_

Unless, of course, that was what he wanted. A girl who would jump on top of him, terrified of the thought of losing him.

_**Nine.**_

A girl who would agree with everything he said. A girl who would at least put forth the effort to be presentable around his family. A girl he could come to at the end of the night, knowing she'd do anything he asked just to wake up in his arms in the morning.

_**Ten.**_

A girl who wasn't Jade.

As Jade reached the final number, Beck still wasn't outside. Yet at the same time, she felt that he was closer then she thought he was - perhaps right outside the door, with his hand on the door handle. Jade began to reach towards the door, knowing that there was still a chance. If she opened the door down, she could tell Beck how much she loved him. How sorry she was that she couldn't be everything he deserved, but by God how he was everything she needed. They'd kiss right there in front of the door, with their friends going "aww" in the background.

It was a picture-perfect ending. But it wasn't going to be the ending tonight.

Jade turned away from the door, heading towards the car to drive home. Much to her pride, she didn't actually start crying until she started the car. Everything that happened in the past few minutes caught up to her at once as she buried her face in her hands.

She knew Beck was going to stay in Tori's house and act like everything was alright. Based on their outside appearances, no one would ever guess it, but Beck was stronger then she was. Their friends were all going to think that their breakup was for the best.

The best for their favorite friend.

* * *

The drive home sucked. Trying to see the road while her mascara was running turned out to be a real pain for Jade. Eventually, though, she made it home, car and body fully intact, opening the door to her home and collapsing in her bed.

Despite being a familiar place, Jade had never felt less welcome in her life. The walls of her bedroom felt restricting. The walls of her sex felt petrified. Her body was trembling, catching up with her brain as to the events of the night.

What felt like days in some sort of purgatory turned out to only be a couple of hours. Jade knew she had to do something to break free. She decided to turn on her TV, not really feeling like watching anything but wanting something for background noise. She stopped on Nickelodeon for a second and saw that _iCarly _was on. Sam and Freddie had decided that their relationship wasn't good for each other or their friends, and as such decided to break up.

_Great. _Jade thought to herself. _Just when I need an escape, the kids' channel decides it needs to drag me down._

However, despite it seemingly being in her best interest, Jade didn't change the channel or turn the TV off. Instead, she became engrossed with the end of Sam and Freddie's relationship, wondering subconsciously if there was something she could borrow from it.

While everything seemed at first like the two were going to immediately split apart, Sam asked if she and Freddie could 'break up after midnight', and Freddie agreed. Before she knew it, Jade was watching the teens make out in an elevator...and that was how the episode ended.

"Seriously?" Jade couldn't help but question aloud. The two of them had just decided that they needed to break up, yet they were able to make out in an elevator shaft as if nothing had happened. And, though Nickelodeon would never say it, it was undeniable that not only were they having sex, but that they had sex one last time before breaking up.

Before the next show could begin, Jade had left her bedroom and was heading for her car, her destination being somewhere she'd always felt welcome. She wouldn't know if that would be the case tonight, but it was certainly worth a try.

* * *

_Conversation between Jade West and Beck Oliver_

_Jade: I'm outside._

* * *

It had started raining since the last time Jade had been outside. This was something she hadn't planned for...not that it bothered her much. She stood outside Beck's RV, hoping that he was back from playing cards by now. Hoping that he'd be alone. Hoping he hadn't found a new body to keep warm through the night-

Before Jade could let her imagination torture her any further, Beck opened the door to his RV. He didn't seem happy nor upset that his ex-girlfriend was there. In fact, he looked more confused than anything. Thankfully, it didn't seem like anyone else was in the RV with him.

"Hey," Jade said, giving him an awkward smile. It was only as she did so that she noticed how red his eyes were. Her smile suddenly turned genuine. In a sick way, she liked the thought that Beck was just as destroyed by them breaking up as she was.

"What are _you _doing here?" Beck questioned, in a bizarre tone of voice that he never spoke in before. Suddenly putting two and two together, Jade realized that Beck hadn't been crying over her. He had been doing what any normal seventeen-year-old boy would do in an RV alone - toking up.

In a way, that was even better.

"Oh my god, are you smoking in here alone?" Jade questioned, pushing past Beck into his RV, where a lighter and a bong clearly sat on the table.

"Oh, uh, come in," Beck said sarcastically, chuckling to himself.

Jade sat down on Beck's couch. She took the lighter and lit the weed that was inside, placing a finger over the hole on the side as she inhaled the smoke. After a few seconds, she took her finger off the hole, inhaling a little bit more before taking a deep breath in and letting a large cloud of smoke exhale from her mouth.

"Just like old times," Jade said, placing the bong back on the table.

Beck sighed, sitting next to Jade on the couch. "So you came to steal my weed?"

"No, that's not all I came here for."

Jade paused for a few seconds as the smoke made the world around her suddenly seem a lot lighter. Her body began to vibrate, and her lips suddenly felt frozen in time. What was actually only a few seconds felt like at least ten minutes, before Beck finally interrupted her trip into euphoria.

"What else are you here for?" Beck demanded, sounding irritated...or at least as irritated as a stoned person was capable of sounding.

"That's good shit," Jade muttered, buying herself a couple more seconds to dodge the question. "Look, I was just at home watching _iCarly _and-"

Before Jade could get into the meat of her story, Beck broke into a burst of uproarious laughter. Partially because he was blazed up, and partially because...well, Jade West had just admitted to sitting at home watching _iCarly._

"Shut up!" Jade yelled.

"Alright, alright, I'm sorry," Beck said, wiping away tears of laughter from his eyes. The only tears he'd had all night.

"You know Sam and Freddie?"

"I know of them."

"You know how they were a couple in the show for a while, even though it seemed like they really weren't right for each other, but then in one episode they decided to break up, but it'd be after midnight?"

Beck's brain took a second to catch up to Jade's information dump. "Uh...yeah, I do."

"So they just spent an hour and a half making out in an elevator shaft?"

"You wanna make out in an elevator shaft?" Beck questioned, beginning to laugh again. His laugh was abruptly cut up when he felt the heat of his ex drawing closer to him.

"Well, we don't live in a Nickelodeon show, so I'd like to do a little more than that," Jade said, wrapping her arms around his neck. "And it doesn't have to be in an elevator shaft. I want it to be on that same couch my butt print's been permanently carved into."

"Your butt print...?" Beck began, looking past Jade at the cushion behind her to see that her butt had been there...a lot. "Oh yeah, I see it now."

Jade drew her lips closer to Beck's. "Just 'cause we're broken up, that doesn't mean we can't...hook up, right?"

The phrase 'hooking up' hanging in the air felt weird. Maybe they did live in a Nickelodeon show. However, Jade only referred to it how it felt natural - you weren't exactly supposed to 'make love' to your ex, and sex seemed like something that couples did. Hooking up - that was getting straight to the point. Everybody hooked up. There were whole apps for it.

Beck slightly pulled away from Jade - enough to indicate he was still interested, but still telling her that perhaps she was taking things too fast. "I mean, that's what it should mean."

"I'm not trying to make this a thing." Jade insisted. "Just...one last time. I think it'd bring some sort of closure to...you know, what we were."

Beck gave Jade a mischevious smirk. "So you're saying you want me to hit it and quit it?"

"Refer to me in a sentence like that again and you're dead." Jade quickly shot back, reminding Beck who was in charge. She placed her body on his lap, placing herself close enough she could feel his breathing quickly getting heavier. Their lips finally came together, entering a passionate kiss that all at once made Jade feel like everything was right with the world again.

Maybe that was the weed talking.

Before either of them had a split second to change their minds, Jade decided to grab at Beck's shirt, lifting it up his torso over his head. Pulling away from the kiss briefly, she admired his firm torso...as she had many, many times before. After feeling that she'd looked long enough that his skin was all she could think about, she pulled back into his lips, and the two began to make out again.

Jade felt Beck's hand slide down to her rear, grasping it like a first-place trophy. Feeling that she needed a countermove, Jade slid her hand onto Beck's back, where she intended to dig her nails into his skin. She knew it had to sting a little for him, but it was something that Jade loved.

Before she was able to get very far, however, Jade felt Beck's hand slowly gliding hers away from his back. Confused at first, Jade quickly realized why; it was one of her ways of showing that Beck belonged to her. That wasn't the case anymore. Since they weren't dating anymore, there was a very real possibility that someone else was going to see Beck's back. That someone else was going to get as close as she was.

This was just hooking up.

_Damn it, Jade, you're not going to cry now_, Jade quickly thought to herself, willing herself into acting as if everything was normal. _This is what break-up sex is about. Some prissy broad is going to be riding on the Beck train one of these days, and both of us need to remember that I was here first. Like the people who test out roller coasters._

As per usual when they had sex, Jade briefly became lost in a separate train of thought. _I wonder how many people have died trying out roller coasters._

Before Jade was able to ponder about heads falling to the ground at Six Flags, she suddenly felt Beck push her back onto the couch.

"Wake up, princess," Beck moaned into her ear, biting it. It didn't hurt, but the little bit of discomfort gave Jade butterflies in her stomach.

Beck was now leaning down to kiss Jade, while one of his hands started to travel up her torso. After maybe thirty seconds of Beck's touch, Jade felt that hand slowly drifting down south. Much like she had done to him, Beck pulled off Jade's shirt, leaving her torso clad in her black bra.

Jade decided she would take care of the final garment on her upper body, tossing it to the ground. With her skin exposed, Beck's kiss and touch had more area to explore, which left her body shivering.

Beck gave himself even more room by getting everything off of Jade, leaving her lying in a more vulnerable position than she'd ever let anyone see her in. A position that she thought was always going to be just between them.

_Do. Not. Cry._

With Jade clad in nothing but the smell of smoke around them, she took the opportunity to sit back up and try to make the current state of undress fair for both of them. Her hands moved slowly but surely enough to tell that Beck was still certainly excited to see her. This again brought a smile to Jade's face.

Feeling that he deserved some kind of reward, Jade focused herself on Beck's natural reaction in the way that she knew he liked it. It was mere seconds before an early sign he was enjoying it came to her. While it did excite her, Jade didn't want her last intimate experience with Beck to be some normal fooling around. After feeling she had given them enough moisture to work with, she removed herself from him, laying herself back on his couch with a come-hither expression.

Beck was again pulling himself closer to Jade, this time in a way that made sure that there was no distance between them. A feeling began to bubble up inside her, one that she was determined to hold onto. She wished she could bottle this feeling up, lifting her nose to it and breathing in when she needed to. Maybe this wouldn't be so hard if she had that.

Beck's hands traveled down from Jade's face, which she certainly didn't mind. Beck was far from a selfish partner - he always made sure Jade was feeling just as good as he did. Furthermore, it gave him something else to look at, which kept them from avoiding the awkward eye contact that should've come from him being on top of her.

Eye contact wasn't apart of hooking up.

Even beyond where Beck's hands were, he was perfect in how he knew where exactly his body belonged to give her the same satisfaction he got. Her body began to feel like volts of electricity were circling through it, and she knew that she'd soon be closing her eyes and biting her lip, unable to take the pleasure. Based on the pace of Beck's breathing, he was getting there as well.

Beck began to moan; clearly pleasured, but with a hint of frustration as well.

"Shh, baby, it's alright," Jade replied, struggling to keep her teeth from biting down on her lip before she could finish her sentence.

_Baby?_ Were pet-names apart of break-up sex? Did it really matter? Was there a manual somewhere Jade should have read? She brushed all that aside as she gave in to the natural feeling, biting her lip and closing her eyes. Every muscle in her body was twitching as she felt the natural reaction to Beck. She let out a loud moan - almost a scream - as Beck went even further in making her feel like his lover.

As Jade began to open her eyes again, her vision still blurred, she knew that Beck was still looking for his own satisfaction.

Deciding to aid him verbally, Jade began to moan suggestively. "Oh, yes. I want to feel you, Beck Oliver."

All at once, Jade felt Beck pull apart from her. The full name tended to do it for him. Jade watched Beck's facial expressions turn comedic, as he had his own way of dealing with the pleasure that overcame his body.

As if it was second nature to her, Jade leaned down and began to wipe off Beck, almost in the way a cat takes care of themselves. After she felt that she had sufficiently groomed him, she cuddled up to his bare chest on the couch.

"Wanna watch a movie?" Jade enquired.

_"What?"_

The apparent warmth of the room suddenly turned ice-cold as Beck leaped up off the couch, still completely naked and, from the looks of it, probably able to go for another round. "Uh, how do I know how break-up sex works better than you?"

Jade's eyes went wide. The reality of the world began to hit her again. She had a strange feeling in her stomach again...butterflies? No, she felt nauseous. "Why can't I just stay for tonight? I think I've still got some clothes here, and no one's going to notice how we get to school tomorrow if we get there early-"

"No," Beck said firmly. "Jade, you have to go. If you stay tonight...well, I'm never going to want you to leave me. And we both know that's not good for either of us."

The room was silent for a couple of seconds. Finally, Jade pulled herself off the couch, grabbing her clothes from the floor. She slid her black panties onto herself first, but did it slowly, savoring the last time they'd ever be on the floor of Beck's RV.

As Jade continued to get dressed in silence, she couldn't help but take in the setting around her. There was a bed in the RV - while they'd decided it was easier on the couch for the sake of how spur-of-the-moment they tended to be, Jade had certainly given herself to Beck on it many times. There was the closet, where the two of them had once done it on top of a pile of laundry. There were the bulletproof windows, one of which Beck had pressed Jade up against before making her feel like their two bodies became one.

Beyond the sex, there was the elephant in the room that, one day, another girl was going to be in this RV. Beck was annoyingly hot, so it was an inevitability. They were going to kiss in there. He was going to say something cute, and she was going to giggle at it - likely in an annoying way, as Jade felt most girls did. (Jade didn't giggle - at least, not voluntarily. Beck loved it when he could accidentally slip one out of her.)

Beck was going to give this new girl every part of himself, making the union between him and Jade no longer special. One of these days, Beck would be in an apartment - a house, even - and there'd be someone there for him. Someone was going to grow very old and very happy with him.

It just wouldn't be Jade.

Now fully dressed, Jade headed to the exit of the RV.

"Jade-" Beck began, as if he suddenly realized that what he thought he wanted wasn't what he wanted at all.

"No." Jade interrupted firmly, holding up a finger to him. "Say nothing."

Beck didn't say another word as Jade removed herself from the RV, closing the door behind her. She walked slowly but steadily to her car. She opened the door and sat herself down in the driver's seat.

It was only as she turned the key to start the engine that Jade felt herself finally break down. Safe from the engrossing appearance of her ex-boyfriend, Jade was free to sob in her car, and sob she did.

She knew she'd have to drive home eventually. But, just for a minute, Jade wanted to keep herself in Beck's driveway, as if her weeping presence would lock their two hearts back together.

Once Jade finally composed herself enough to drive, the growing distance of the RV made it clear to her that they were really over. Beck and Jade - the power couple meant to rule the world, was suddenly no more. The queen had been overthrown, and it was no one's fault but her own.


End file.
